School commuting: Barriers, abilities and strategies toward sustainable public transport systems in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

This study aims to investigate students’ difficulties in using the bus to get to school based on Rasch analysis and examines students’ innate abilities in handling the barriers. A total of 536 high school students in Yogyakarta were randomly surveyed. This study considers forty barriers of bus use grouped into eight aspects: safety, bus stop reliability, accessibility, mobility, payment sys-tem, bus reliability, transfer efficiency, and information and communication technology. The results show that the students experienced 18 main barriers in using the bus. The limited time of travel, circuitous routes, and distance to the bus stops were the three most significant barriers for students in using the bus during the morning commute. Conversely, students reported no difficulty using the bus regarding safety and payment system aspects. This result additionally shows that gender, age, allowance, and drivers’ licenses also influence the extent of the barrier experienced by the stu-dents. Finally, some strategies to increase the students’ ability to overcome barriers in utilizing the bus are proposed to create a sustainable public transport system in Yogyakarta. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.